Ian Record:

“So I’m here with Chairwoman Karen Diver, who is the chairwoman of Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. And previous to that, she served as Director of Special Projects for Fond du Lac, so she has a wide range of experience, which is precisely why we’re having her sit down with us today.

The first question I’d like to ask you is a question that I ask everyone I sit down with and that is, how would you define Native nation building and what does it entail for your nation?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s almost straight out of the textbook: aggressive assertions of sovereignty backed up by capable institutions. You come into tribal government and it’s at different phases in its growth. And given that most tribes have really not been self-governing for that long, often times, we’re plugging the gap or reformulating. But if the basis of your decision is always putting self-governance first and self-determination, generally you can always plug in the gaps of your institutional capabilities along the way. But it’s the legitimacy of the actions and then backing it up with the way to actually implement them.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned 'legitimacy in the actions,' and the Native Nations Institute and Harvard Project research holds that for Native nation governments to be viewed as legitimate by the people that they serve, they must be both culturally appropriate and effective, which is a double-edged challenge for a lot of nations, particularly those that have not governed, essentially been in control of their own governance for a very long time, and had that determined by outsiders. So how do you view that assertion that for governments to be legitimate, they have to be not only effective, but also culturally appropriate?”

Karen Diver:

“I think for tribes, we’re not as removed from government; government is very personal. Tribal members can walk in at any time, we employ our tribal members, we’re related to one another, so it’s not impersonal in a way that I think traditional government is. And when you’re decision making, the actual impact on real people in their real lives really has to be primary. And for that to work, you have to take into account the circumstances in which they live. It could be as simple, for us, making sure that our policies and procedures account for the ability to participate in cultural activities like wild rice leave, for example, is actually in our personnel policies. It’s a week-long endeavor; people need to do it when the crop is ready. Or it can be as broad based as, what do your family leave policies look like? Recognizing we have extended, large extended families, the grieving process is a community process. So just giving a bank of leave time might not be something appropriate. You might want to have some flexible use of leave to take into account that our families are large, complicated, and primarily their employment serves to take care of them and their families. So you have to have that balance. So cultural traditions matter, and to balance those with the needs of both governmental and the economic entities that we serve; that’s the only way we’re going to have a successful workforce.”

Ian Record:

“So I want to next run a quote by you that we reference often and it’s a quote by a Native leader who once said, ‘The best defense of sovereignty is to exercise it effectively.’ Can you speak to that statement?”

Karen Diver:

“To me, that really means once again building up those capable institutions. Everybody likes to know, ‘What are the rules that we’re playing by?’ Especially if you’re dealing with outside entities that you do work with, whether it’s governmental or through your economic development efforts, but also that you’re defining what those rules are and whether you’re dealing with a local unit of government, the feds, bankers, auditors, they don’t get to define the playing field. You’re defining the rules, you’re communicating them, and you’re saying that, ‘Your work with us is going to be defined by us.’ A lot of that is understanding the tenets of Indian law and explaining it to people and making distinctions between, ‘Who are we as a race?’ versus our political status and those are often confused by many people. So as long as you keep your political status separate than our cultural traditions and who we are historically and currently as a people. To me, that’s real basic and that’s really one of the main elements of sovereignty."

Ian Record:

“You, as I mentioned at the outset, you have served your nation both as a senior administrator and as currently, as chairwoman. I was curious to learn, what, based on your experience, do tribal bureaucracies need to be effective?”

Karen Diver:

“Well, that’s real key. We all know when it goes wrong. It’s the deviation from what is normal and it’s viewed as political graft or having a brother in power so to speak and that’s where…for the average citizen they feel that tribal government isn’t really serving them; it’s inequities in service delivery or access. And sometimes that happens at the service delivery level or the program level or institutional level with hiring and things like that. I think for tribal government, monitoring those activities, putting those systems in place, building accountability and transparency of the rules ends up being key to having equitable service delivery and equitable systems. And for our band members, the expectation that it doesn’t matter who you elect, the level of service you receive and your opportunities are the same.”

Ian Record:

“So it essentially supports stability and expectations among the people when they don’t…they see consistency. They see fairness and they can see consistency across administration so it’s not just, ‘Oh it was this way for this term,’ and then the new term comes in, new administration comes in and things change.”

Karen Diver:

“Well, you’re proving capability in government, too, because the reason you would elect people changes then it becomes about their effectiveness and their skills and ability to do the job rather than your personal connections and how you might gain from that. So it changes peoples’ I think reason for how and why they may vote for tribal leadership.”

Ian Record:

“And being a chair of a nation, you must experience this firsthand, this challenge of the dependency mentality. Where the expectations, at least on part of the citizenry, is rooted in, ‘What can the government do for me?’ or, ‘I’m going to go to the government and get the goodies,’ rather than really viewing that government as serving the nation, as advancing the nation’s long-term priorities. Is that something you struggle with and how do you do you work to overcome that?”

Karen Diver:

“Yes, I’ve struggled with it, but I’ve struggled with it in terms of, once again, how do we build those systems in place so that they serve the needs of our citizenry, but also changing the expectations of our citizenry? And the current tribal council has been a part of kind of changing the mentality of, ‘What our citizens should expect from their tribal government?’ And I usually say to folks, ‘Don’t ask me for a handout. Ask me for a job, or if you’re not ready for that yet, why don’t you tell me what you need to get there?’ And the framing of it is fairly simple. What I tell people is, ‘I care about you enough that I’m not going to put a band-aid on your issue because it’s going to come back. Unless I know what’s going on, we need to create or refer you to something that creates a long-term fix because I don’t want you to have to come back.’ And I really feel that promoting dependency within our own community is a part of the reason why we haven’t been able to move as forward as we could be yet because I’ve turned into a social worker now instead of an administrator, instead of someone who assures that there’s good systems. And I also think it’s not fair to our people to say to them, ‘The way that you get services is by telling me a lot of your personal problems that are going on.’ I need to know them to the extent that I need to identify any gaps in our system, but I also shouldn’t put my own people -- if I care about them -- in the position of having to beg, and there is a difference. I’m not doing it to satisfy my ego because I can feel really good about what I’ve done for you. I care about you enough to say, ‘Let’s look at a long-term fix instead of a short-term band-aid.’”

Ian Record:

“Right. So it’s essentially, ‘Let’s look at the root cause of your problem or your challenge,’ versus just simply addressing the symptom, which will be sure to reoccur at some point.”

Karen Diver:

“Right. And it helps me identify where we might have gaps in service, whether it’s combined case management, stabilizing your housing, where you really need some service delivery, whether it’s health issues, we should make sure that each of our systems are coordinated enough that there is a holistic response to the issues people face in their day-to-day lives.”

Ian Record:

“You mention this issue of building a holistic response, or the capacity to do that, to whatever issue is at hand or that you’re facing. And this really gets to this issue of developing a systems-based approach to service delivery, which we hear about more and more, and we see a lot of that sort of activity in Indian Country with nations saying, ‘The status quo is not working. We’ve got our programs and services going a million different directions, they often duplicate one another. We’ve got to take a systems-based approach that gets at these root causes that you discuss.’ Is that something that you’re working to do, take care of?”

Karen Diver:

“Oh, actively. And both as a staff member and then once I got elected. I’ll give you an example. One of our projects that we’ll be breaking ground here within a month is supportive housing. Supportive housing is what transitional housing used to be. It’s for folks who have had a hard time getting on their feet and for every step forward it might have been two back, chronic homeless, multiple episodes of homelessness. Well, homelessness isn’t the lack of a house, it’s a circumstance, a set of circumstances going on that are preventing people from being stable. In order to do supportive housing, you not only have to build the housing, but you also have to develop service delivery that looks at what are the needs of the family and they may be multiple. You’re also committing to staying by them whether or not they take that step forward or step back, and that’s why they call it permanent supportive housing, because unlike transitional housing the two years are up whether you’re ready to be independent or not. And what it really does is say, in terms of case management, what does the whole family need and it’s self-determined by the family. So much like for tribal government, it’s saying for families, too, to say, ‘What are my needs right now?’ and their needs might be simple in the beginning. It might be having adequate health care and getting their diabetes under control so they’re not facing chronic health issues. It might mean helping the family say at some point that they’re chemical dependent, coming to the realization that it is fueled by underlying mental illness, but there’s a safe place to be able to say that and get at the root causes of why people anesthetize themselves with drugs and alcohol. And what you’re trying to do is reduce the episodes of homelessness and instability in the family so that children can stay in longer, the same school longer, they can maintain their level of health care and what you see over time is school social workers are talking to mental health case managers. We know that health outcomes are affected by the lack of housing; we know that school performance is affected by that. Working together stabilizes the need for service delivery by multiple systems, but they all have to be at the table and integrated together. It’s a model that’s been shown to work outside Indian Country, not yet being implemented to a big extent within Indian Country. The model’s perfect for us because we know our families best. We need to be talking to each other and the family will be the one that hopefully will move forward because of it. So it’s an example, but we’ve built silos in Indian Country, much like we’ve bemoaned in larger systems that are out there, but we’re better contained within ourselves to actually break those down.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned you know your families best. And hearing you describe this approach of supportive housing, that requires an intimate understanding, intimate awareness of what’s going on in your community, what their needs are, what their challenges are, what their priorities are, what they need from the tribe in order to be made whole, or put them on the road to self-sufficiency, whatever it might be, that’s not an approach that an outsider can develop and implement. Is it something that has to be done at the local level by the people who it’s designed to serve?”

Karen Diver:

“Absolutely, because at any given point in that service delivery or that plan that the family develops, you’re going to have to have culturally competent service delivery. You’re going to have to understand that for a family to break their cycle of chemical dependency that it might be isolating to them for some of their other family members, and that’s a hard thing to do. So you’re recreating family systems and showing them a healthy way in a way that doesn’t deny their ability to still remain a part of a larger community. It’s understanding that children are served best when they’re with their families and an easy fix isn’t putting them in out-of-home placement, but intensive services for their extended families. It’s building even the actual facilities in a way that understands that we tend to congregate together and you never know when you might have a niece coming to live with you, and it shouldn’t upset your household composition because that’s what your housing rules say. So it requires us to be flexible. And I think that’s one of the beauties of self-governance is when you determine your own rules, you can be flexible enough to meet multiple demands, but in a way that’s also accountable so that everybody has the same access to that flexibility.”

Ian Record:

“As I mentioned, you were once a senior administrator of your tribe and now you’re the chairwoman. And I was curious to learn, having served in both of those capacities, can you speak to the importance of delineating clear, distinct roles, responsibilities, authorities for each of those key decision makers, implementers? And what happens when those roles aren’t clearly defined?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s an over-used phrase, but I think many people have heard it. If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which road you take. I think that for both tribal government and tribal administrators, it’s all about the plan. Where do we plan to get in two years, five years? I’m a big fan of strategic planning. I’m a big fan of understanding who is responsible for the items in the strategic plan. Who’s monitoring the outcomes and making sure that we’re holding staff accountable? Has there been community input to the plan so that we’re actually serving them and going in a direction that they care about? And we are just starting to undertake now a whole community-wide strategic planning process that will inform tribal government and it’s a difficult transition. Last year I thought, ‘I’m just going to get the staff kind of primed and say give me a few goals and objectives for the year,’ and I almost started a mass revolt. I had the flurry of emails saying, ‘What did you mean by that?’ ‘Well, I want to know what you plan to do next year. This is not a trick question, what do you plan to do,’ because at the end of next year I’m going to say, ‘Did you accomplish what you had planned?’ And you’re actually going to maybe make presentations to tribal council about that. Also understanding your role, there’s a plan and each department should understand who their stakeholders are. Human Resources, for example, they think of the applicants and employees as their stakeholders, but they don’t necessarily think of their other divisions that they do the work for as their stakeholders and at the timeliness of their work and the quality of their work can have a big affect on operations. So right now, our tribal council has three of our members were in administrative positions before so we were on the other side of the tribal council table. It’s made a huge difference in terms of our understanding of the importance of their work, not frittering it away, making meeting time productive time and they’re happy. They’re happy because being accountable to us is different. It’s in terms of decision making, not necessarily these huge processes that takes up a lot of their time but doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything. So very important on both ends to understand, ‘What is our role?’ We’re an approving role, they’re doing the work and they’re bringing us their recommendations.”

Ian Record:

“So it’s essentially -- and this gets to what my next question’s about -- what are the respective roles of elected officials and those administrators and bureaucratic employees because you’re seeing it less and less, which I think is a good thing, what you see in some Native communities is still the mentality among the leadership where they have to do it all, and a reticence perhaps to delegate authority. And I’m curious to learn from you how you envision the roles and the separation of those roles and where does one’s work stop and the other’s begin, perhaps?”

Karen Diver:

“I think we’re fairly typical of every tribal government and it comes up during campaign time and when we have our open meetings with our citizenry, they say, ‘The reservation business committee, they micromanage.’ And what I tell people is, ‘You expect us not to micromanage, you want us to take big picture, our appropriate role is in policy making, procedure development, setting vision and long-term direction of the reservation.’ I said, ‘But you want that until the issue involves you, then you expect us to micromanage and fix your problem, and if I go back and tell you you have the ability to provide a grievance or you can talk to the program manager and resolve conflict that way,’ you say, ‘you’re not taking care of my issue.’ So it goes back to that, how do you balance the personal aspect of tribal government, because we are all interrelated, we’re a community, a tight-knit community with the ability to put good governance systems in place and good business systems in place and there’s no perfect science to that, because first of all you’re never going to develop a policy where you’re going to expect to hit every possible outcome or gap. That’s why your policies are a work in progress and need regular review and updating. Also people come up with some really personal circumstances that you may want to accommodate. So I think that there’s a balance there.

The delegation of authority ends up being a lot about control and hiring capable staff and letting them do their job is really key in getting all of the work done because tribal government has a breadth unlike any other form of government. We are corporate, we are government, we are like non-profit service delivery agencies, environmental, education, health. We have to rely on content-area experts. However, I also think being a context expert, they don’t always recognize the big picture they operate in because they’re looking at it from their silo of expertise. So I think tribal government role -- if you look at it in terms of dialogue and challenging each other -- we can help them see the big picture, they can help us understand the peculiarities of their particular area of expertise. That’s where you come up with the win-win. It’s when it’s directive or when you impose upon them, but if you set up the right processes, we often say government-to-government consultation, well we need to have consultation within our organization as well so that we can come up with the best possible scenarios up front and tweak them along the way and see where we may have missed something.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned in part of your previous response about the expectations of citizens, particularly come campaign time. For instance, where internally between elected officials and administrators, bureaucratic employees, you may have a clear understanding of who should be doing what, but then there’s the citizen’s expectations that are always causing friction against that. How important is public education about the separations of authorities, about the checks and balances, about the delegations, about who does what? That it’s incumbent upon Native nation governments not just to have a clear internal understanding, but also to make sure the community understands so that it allows you to keep your momentum going?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s a difficult process, I’ll be very honest about that. And one of the ways I characterize it in some of the one-on-one conversations I have with tribal members is if all of my wishes could come true for our own people, one of them would be that it really didn’t matter who you elect, because it didn’t have relevance in your day-to-day life. That as an individual and as a leader in your family, you were able to get and/or acquire those things you need to meet the needs of your own family, whether that’s through employment educational opportunities, social services, that you knew what was out there and you could access it and you were using those resources to build your own self-sufficiency to the point where once it came to the ballot, it was much like traditional forms of government. Who has the skills to do the job? Do they have the background? Do they have a plan? And it changes your expectations. So I think that’s something that comes over time. But also, when people understand that in their best interest, they can self determine their own needs and you’re creating the systems for that to happen, I think it’s going to change the dynamic of what individuals expect out of tribal government.”

Ian Record:

“And isn’t that where strategic planning is very important because the community understands, ‘There’s a larger goal at work here. It’s not just about the now, it’s not just about what I need personally or what my family needs at this moment, but it’s about where we’re trying to head as a community.'“

Karen Diver:

“I think the economic crisis has really changed that a bit. I think in Indian Country -- especially for tribes who have been building a private sector economy within their borders and really using that as a surrogate tax base -- you’ve been able to plug in some of the gaps and funding in order to create programs or supplement them and access other sources of funding. And I think that the downturn really let people know that it’s not a given that tribal government’s going to continue to grow, it’s not a given that the things that are here now will remain. And we’re a per capita [distribution] tribe, so that’s one of the things we’ve been able to do purely as a poverty reduction; nobody’s getting rich off it. But people understood that maybe that isn’t a given and that we have to be smart about our resources, and maybe the best use of tribal government time is looking at economic and governmental stability and not necessarily the day-to-day issues that arise in tribal council’s life. They’re taking a little bit more ownership and more what we’re doing is more information and referral, ‘Did you know that this is available to you and this is available to you?’ rather than direct service, one-on-one."

Ian Record:

“So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about economic development. And a lot of what the NNI-Harvard Project research looks at is the two polar opposites when it comes to economies that we see in Indian Country. One, you have essentially the dependent economy, which is largely born of constitutions and governments that were imposed or systems of governments that were imposed by the outside. And then you have productive economies, which we’re obviously seeing more and more of as tribes take control of their own affairs, as they begin to launch and build diversified economies. I was wondering, from your perspective, how do Native nations move from a dependent economy, heavily reliant on outsiders, the federal government, to a productive economy where they themselves are in the driver’s seat of economic development? And in that process of moving from one to the other, what are some of the most important building blocks?”

Karen Diver:

“First and foremost, social capital. You need to develop your own citizenry to be a part of that. Talk to a lot of young people and say, ‘What are you going to school for? Liberal arts? Great. We need people to do services to our own band members, but gee, do you also know we need accountants? We need internal auditors; we need dentists and healthcare delivery people, teachers.’ So I think building that social capital so that the cultural competency comes from our own people serving our own community is real key. We can’t always use neighbors and people who aren’t familiar with our own community because then you miss that cultural competency piece. A lot of good people in Indian Country who are Native, but we really need to grow our own and provide the role models. The other part of it is purely regulatory. Do you have the systems in place where economic development can thrive? One of the gaps in our own system right now is we don’t have uniform commercial codes. So that’s kind of on the block. Developing systems of conflict resolution that are transparent and you know who’s rules you’re operating under. Once again, the tenets of Indian law, if you’re working with outside parties, do they really know what dealing with a sovereign is and the context with which this business relationship will be taken out? Regulatory control is also things as simple as what’s your background check policy? Are you going to be able to meet outside commitments that you’re making, for example, under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act? Do you understand their rules? If you’re in a banking relationship, what are their rules, their operating on and how do you mesh that with your own? So I think that a lot of homework goes into building a community where economic development can thrive. And part of it is do you understand your role in it and the role of your people and all of your different departments? For example, if you’re going to work with an outside agency that’s looking at some resources within the reservation, like mining, do you have your regulatory capacity there to look at environmental issues, for example? So, identifying those initiatives and seeing what you have within tribal government that needs to be involved, having them all on the table up front, and identifying your gaps, and either developing it or bringing in consultants who have it so you can have informed decision making.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned this issue of, or the importance of investing in social capital, particularly among your young people. Not only finding out what their interests are, but saying, ‘Hey, we have needs in this area.’ That’s, but that, isn’t that the first step because then you have to make sure that the opportunities that are available are stable, that they’re consistent? That you’re not going to have the political turnover, ripple effect where the administration comes in and they clean house, which our research has shown causes this horrible problem of brain drain where people say, ‘I’m not going to invest my time and resources in the future of the nation because I can’t be certain I’m going to get a return on that investment.’ So I was wondering if you could speak to that issue of making sure that those opportunities are stable and that the environment in which you’re asking them to participate is reliable.”

Karen Diver:

“Once again, I think if you start to change and really have a conversation with your community about what do they feel is the appropriate role in tribal government in their day-to-day life, that then starts changing the stability of the workforce. And you’re right, we’ve invested heavily in education, both by creating our own institutions and through scholarship funds and telling people, ‘There’s a big world out there. Go learn things and bring it back home.’ Only for them to not be able to have the ability to worry about their sacrifices of their own stability in their family, and that’s sad. It’s sad and it’s unfortunate because you’re right, it creates brain drain. With the capable institutions, and with some emotional maturity and changing your expectations of what tribal leaders should be both personally and professionally, I think you get towards the bigger picture of, ‘If I’m here to serve my people, that means also dealing with my political detractors, as well as my political supporters,’ and they still end up being tribal members and deserve service whether they like you or not, whether they care about you or not, or whether they believe in you or not, you do your best by them. And I think it’s developing some political maturity to say, ‘Yes, I may not be meeting your expectations, but over time, can we find your place here within this community as well?’ So I think it’s a little shortsighted. We think we want to be surrounded by loyalty, but that’s a moving target. On any given day, you’re going to make a decision that may affect people in a way that they may not want, but it’s whether or not your transparency of government helps them understand why you’re doing it, that it’s not personal, that you were going to make this decision because it’s good for the whole and yeah, it might not work for everybody. So I think a part of it is just your skill at the politics of communicating why decisions are made and whether the transparency was there in the decision making so people understand why and then don’t take it personal.”

Ian Record:

“And doesn’t that really get to this issue of rules? The NNI/Harvard Project research clearly shows that rules are more important than resources in terms of building vibrant economies. Can you speak to that issue?”

Karen Diver:

“Yeah sure, it’s interesting because when I talk to folks and I’m in the unfortunate position of having to tell them I can’t do something for them, one of the things I usually preface it with or end with it is, ‘I know you want this, but one of the rules we follow here for this tribal government is if we can’t do it for everyone, we can’t do it for one. And so if…do you think if I ask the tribal membership if we should do this for you, what do you think their answer would be? Would they be supportive of this decision?’ And generally, when you put it in that context, people will understand that you are making rules for all, not the few. On the other hand, sometimes you come up with one where you say, ‘Geez, we should do something about that and would we be willing to do it for everyone? Maybe, maybe not because the circumstances matter, but it’s justifiable and you knew if you put the whole circumstances out there, our community would say, ‘Yeah we don’t maybe don’t want to make that a practice,’ but in this instance, for their set of circumstances, it’s the right thing to do because we do care about our community. But it’s justifiable in a way so you almost have the litmus test of community voting. And you’re saying, 'How would people think about this?' And if you constantly keep that in mind, and the fact that it doesn’t matter who’s in your office, assume you’re telling everybody because everybody will know. Your actions are public and if someone asks, ‘What’s going on with tribal government?’ you have to be willing to tell them. That transparency is what keeps government honest. So day by day, you take it as it comes and take each circumstances, but if you use that litmus test of, ‘If I put it to a referendum vote, or no matter who walked through the door, would you behave the same?’ generally, you’re going to get pretty close to what you need to a capable government whose rules are not only transparent, but consistency ends up being the biggest key.”

Ian Record:

“And when you have those consistent rules in place that are consistently enforced, isn’t that liberating for you as an elected official, because you then are in a position where you can say no to someone and have it not be personal? And say, ‘Here’s my reason. We have, for instance, a hiring and firing dispute, which I’m sure you encounter in an economic development entity of the tribe or within tribal government. You say, ‘Hey, we have a personnel grievance process for that. I’d be overstepping my bounds as an elected official to take on this issue, to even consider your complaint.’”

Karen Diver:

“Very much so. It is liberating in a way and it’s something that the current tribal council, in terms of building our own capacity to govern and also for our own stability in making sure we’re all behaving in the same way even when we’re not in a meeting, when we’re having different interactions, is to actually have those conversations with each other, have a set of board norms, take some planning time and say, ‘here’s something that you don’t necessarily need a policy for, but it’s something we’re confronted with. How do we behave? Let’s be consistent, all get on the same page.’ Your answer then can be, ‘Gee, I hear you and I understand but the council made a decision that this is the way that we’re going to handle it,’ and speaking with one voice. A lot of this goes to whether or not you’re building a capable board that’s cohesive and all operating off of the same page, so speaking with one voice. You have those arguments. It’s kind of like mommy and daddy, you argue, but you don’t let the kids hear you kind of thing. We have that time where we work things out amongst ourselves but once we come to talking about them in a public way, whatever answer prevailed, we all stick with and support and so a lot of it goes to good governance from an internal perspective as well. And you’re right, it is liberating. It gives individual members a way to say, ‘We all stick together.’ You can’t go from one to the other and try to get a different answer because we’re all going to talk about it and then give you our decision as a whole rather than an individual.”

Ian Record:

“One final question I wanted to ask you, and it was interesting, we were interviewing another tribal leader earlier this morning, and he likened being an elected leader of a Native nation to drinking from a fire hose, which I’m sure you can identify with. I was wondering if you could talk about, how can leaders manage the often overwhelming pressures they face, in order to lead effectively? How can they manage that load, forge ahead, implement that strategic vision, guide that strategic vision, so that the nation can achieve the future it wants?”

Karen Diver:

“I think it’s management principles, and I think as we develop our own folks and they decide to serve through elected leadership, they’re going to bring different management capabilities to the table. And I usually tell new managers or people who are also feeling that -- because it happens all through the organization, not just at the top -- is prioritize, delegate and advocate. You prioritize. I liken it to going to the casino’s buffet. You only get one plate at a time, but you have all those choices so you pick that first plate carefully. When things are going well, you might even start with dessert, but when they’re not going well you might start with your meat instead of your salad. So you prioritize and pick that first plate very carefully. You put out the fires, but you pay attention to what precedent are you setting. Don’t just make it go away for going away’s sake 'cause you’re setting precedent, but you put out the fires first and you kind of look at your organization methodically. Right now we’re lucky; we have no fires. So what we’re looking at is that middle layer of management that is actually broader than the emergencies, but has more long-term impact. Does our organizational structure fit the service delivery we need to do, are there gaps, are there efficiencies to be found so you prioritize and you clip your way through it. Delegating is you don’t have to do it all on your own. You have a hierarchy in place. Make sure the hierarchy is working for you. Use content-area experts; hire them if you need to. I think one of the biggest failings of tribal government is to not admitting what you don’t know and asking and listening to those who do. I couldn’t have done a lot of the work in the last year without listening to my environmental staff, my education staff, my health staff. In many ways I take my orders from them. What are your priorities? What do you need me to talk about? Who do you need me to call? And let them do their jobs. Advocate ends up being important, because a lot of I think doing with tribal government work is educating people around and within you of the role of tribal government. What are our boundaries? How do we get partners in to do our work? We’ve been so busy building our self-governance, we forget we have allies out there, different funding sources, the legislatures, building relationships with townships and counties, which I think is actually going backwards lately because of cuts in local government aid and the economy and they see tribes not as partners anymore, but how do we get into their pocketbooks. So maintaining those relationships and advocacy sometimes happens in a crisis, sometimes in a proactive way, but really saying, ‘Hello, we’re still here, we have an impact, we have a role to play. It might not be the one you define, but there are areas of win-win, let’s talk about those,’ and telling that story. And if you can slowly clip through it that way, it becomes a little bit more manageable. What I usually tell people is tribal government, we’ve only really been self-governing in any meaningful way, probably for thirty years. We’ll continue to get better at it and we’ll make mistakes along the way, but it’s what works and so we have to prove that. So prioritizing and making sure you’re hitting those things and trying to prevent them from becoming those fires ends up being really important.”

Ian Record:

“Well Karen, I appreciate your time today and thanks for sharing your wisdom and your experience with us.”

Karen Diver:

“Thank you, my pleasure.”